Once
upon
a time (1976) I accepted a one-year teaching appointment
at a
university I'd never heard of in a state I had never
visited. Which
just goes to show you that good things can't always be
planned, or even
anticipated. I teach courses in a variety of subjects
having to do with
the meaning of American popular culture. Recurring
themes are
fashion and consumerism. My research training is in the
history of
clothing and
fashion, and I have published many articles on
children's clothing in
America. My first book, Pink and Blue: Telling the
Boys from the Girls in America,
which was published by Indiana University Press in
2012. I am now working on book #2, Sex and Unisex: Fashion,
Feminism and the Sexual Revolution, which will
also be published by Indiana University Press, probably
sometime in 2014.

In
my off-campus life I enjoy all kinds of music,
reading, doing fiber and
paper crafts and playing tourist in the
Washington-Baltimore area. My
husband and I met freshman year in college and were
married senior
year, in a galaxy far, far away. He used to be a
theater technician,
but now he builds model rooms with no actors for the
local IKEA.
(Hooray
for regular hours, awesome benefits and not working on
Saturday
nights.) Our daughter, Maria is an urban
homesteader/blogger/fiddler/gamelan player in nearby
Mount Ranier. Our
son
Danny is an American Studies alumnus from UMBC and
lives and works
in Baltimore. The only "kid" still at home is our
emotionally needy
beagle,
Cunningham.

Jo
Barraclough Paoletti, Associate Professor
American Studies Dept., University of Maryand College
Park